This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 11th, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Six years since September 11th, 2001, how has the role of the presidency changed?

Cato Institute senior editor Jean Healy suggests that under President Bush, the powers of the

chief executive, have never been greater.

To the detriment of civil liberties and separation of powers

now and in the future. A troubling turn of events is a part of Healy's upcoming book,

The Cult of the Presidency, to be published next year.

Since September 11th, what have been the most striking characteristics of President Bush's

assumptions of power?

Well, since 9-11, the administration's advanced the radical theory of executive power

that has among other, among other features the president having the power to

launch wars at will without any consultation with Congress.

Virtually unlimited power to tap phones and read email and without having to see a judge for a warrant.

And probably most striking, I think, was the theory advanced in the Jose Padilla case,

under which the president could seize an American citizen on American

soil and put him in a military brig for the duration of the war on terror in other words perhaps forever.

That I think is one of the most striking claims that's been made since 9-11.

Congress has been pretty much complicit in giving President Bush more authority

sometimes without even knowing precisely what powers they were giving with regard to

the USA Patriot Act most congressmen in fact I don't think any any congressman actually got a chance to read it.

That's right. And it's also right, I think, to blame Congress for a lot of what's happened.

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